Have you established leadership boundaries with your team? If you’re thinking, sounds nice, but not possible, I’m here to tell you it is and it’s essential. Boundaries should be a component of every workplace, leaders included. Leaders should be setting the example, and if they are not including their boundaries, others will not feel welcomed to either.
Leadership boundaries can be so essential to a positive and inclusive culture in the workplace. While specific boundaries are dependent upon the person, they are still important to include at work.
What are Leadership Boundaries?
Leadership boundaries are essentially the lines drawn for comfort by leaders. They’re sometimes the same as any other individual’s boundaries; the leadership component of leadership boundaries is simply that they are held and demonstrated by the leader.
The Leader’s Role with Boundaries
When it comes to boundaries within the workplace, leaders must display the proper procedure for setting and following them. Imagine a leader who put a boundary in place for no work after a certain time, but that boundary is continually crossed. Would employees feel that they could put similar boundaries in place and expect others to follow? Doubtful.
The leader’s role with boundaries is to model the proper behaviors to encourage all to follow boundaries set by coworkers.
How Are Leadership Boundaries Helpful?
There are numerous benefits to leadership boundaries that can be helpful in work situations. Determining the most effective benefits is dependent upon the boundaries and how they’re utilized.
Proactive Interactions
When leadership boundaries are established, there is a greater chance for interactions to be preplanned and prepared for. Maintaining boundaries can require additional steps to ensure leadership is available to the team. By making oneself available before the mistakes occur, leaders can be more proactive in attacking oncoming issues.
Maintain a Set Schedule
One of the great parts about boundaries (for a nerd like me) is the scheduling benefits. When you set boundaries with your time, it’s easier to maintain structure in your schedule. If a boundary is a real, sit down lunch with no work, your schedule will not allow for a working lunch time. You get to maintain a schedule that works for you when you have the proper boundaries in place (mostly – more on that later.).
More Availability During Peak Hours
With leadership boundaries and a set schedule comes the ability to work with the team during the toughest work hours. Imagine if no boundaries were set and a leader attempted to work on a solo project for a couple of hours after lunch, but those hours are during the organization’s busy time. Employees would be pulling the leader away from the solo project to help with the other tasks. Boundaries and smart scheduling stops such conflicts.
Establish Recovery Time
As an added positive aspect, leadership boundaries mean you can build in recovery and rest time for yourself. When you have boundaries that eliminate work during certain times, you can spend those hours focused on yourself and your personal needs. That isn’t always possible when boundaries are not in place.
Respects Others’ Boundaries
When people fail to have their own boundaries, it can be challenging to understand the boundaries set by others. When leadership boundaries are set, leaders can be more accepting and respectful of coworkers’ drawn lines.
Improve Communication
Throughout the process of setting boundaries and following them, leaders must communicate with people. Afterall, it is pretty difficult to enforce boundaries when no one knows about them. Boundaries are invisible lines that must be clearly communicated. The practice of communication will only improve it.
Build Trust
Trust is an important benefit of following leadership boundaries because it gives proper opportunity for people to prove themselves capable. When the lines drawn are followed by the team, leaders know that the people they work with can be trusted. However, the opposite is also true, as an untrustworthy person might ignore all leadership boundaries in place.
Leadership Boundaries: Examples
What might be included in leadership boundaries? There are five main categories to consider. The leadership boundaries examples provided can provide good insight into potential lines to draw for yourself.
1. Emotional
Emotional boundaries can include a number of topics, all related to how you feel. Imagine the feelings that you experience throughout the work day.
Stress. Exhaustion. Overwhelmed. Overstimulated. Uncomfortable.
An emotional boundary could be the ability to take 10 minutes alone in your office when you get overstimulated.
It might even be the ability to voice your feelings in an accepting and appropriate manner.
2. Mental
Mental boundaries are related to your thoughts and beliefs. Setting leadership boundaries in this capacity might look like this:
The space to think alone before sharing with the group, or
Time to practice self-awareness, or
The ability to create a mind map at the end of each day.
3. Spiritual
It might seem conflicting to consider spiritual boundaries in the face of leadership. Truthfully, many leaders do not stop their faith simply because they walk through the office doors. Spiritual boundaries might include:
The freedom to pray silently before a working lunch, or
No work contact on Sundays for Sabbath, or
No debate regarding spiritual beliefs or values in the workplace.
4. Physical
Physical boundaries are hugely imperative in the workplace – sexual harassment is only one of many ways physical touch can get coworkers into trouble. As a leader, setting the physical boundaries can be important so that no one blurs the lines.
No hugging coworkers is one boundary.
Someone avoiding excess germs might set a boundary regarding handshakes by requesting fist bumps or elbow bumps instead.
Another leadership boundary could be keeping six feet between people or wearing a mask in the office.
5. Time
Time boundaries are some of the most common forms of leadership boundaries. People need to have time away from work – and setting boundaries that state this are key.
No work texts or calls after 7pm.
School drop off is at 7:40; I will not arrive to work earlier than 8am.
My lunch is my time. I do not accept lunch meetings.
How to Set Leadership Boundaries
Now that we’ve established an understanding of leadership boundaries, let’s dig into how we set them. It begins with laying it out there: identification.
1. Identification
How might you set leadership boundaries if you cannot identify what they are? Identify your needs and comforts and write down what your boundaries are. You have to be able to communicate your boundaries to yourself before you can adequately express them to others. Be sure you can draw clear and defined lines.
2. Clarify with Others
You must tell others about your leadership boundaries in order for them to abide by the lines drawn. If you’ve failed to draw those lines, no one will know the lines cannot be crossed. Clarification is essential to setting leadership boundaries.
Sometimes that means when mistakes are made and boundaries are crossed, we must reiterate the line. Leadership boundaries are not always a once communicated, always followed situation. There are times when you will need to clarify for various situations and complications. Communicating is vital.
3. Create Systems
It is easier to set leadership boundaries when systems are in place designed to follow said boundaries. What does this look like?
Let’s say you’ve got a boundary in place that states you do not do working lunches. To ensure your assistant doesn’t schedule any, put your own lunch on the calendar. In this system, the assistant can work around your boundary.
Check out another example: You don’t work on Sunday – at all. That’s your leadership boundary. To prevent the need for calls and texts on Sunday, your team created a knowledge base where Sunday workers can check out frequently asked questions and other easy to find solutions. You also turn off your work phone or put it on Do Not Disturb. Those systems protect your boundaries.
4. Avoid Exceptions
Imagine setting leadership boundaries and then making exceptions regularly. If you’ve drawn a line in regards to hugging coworkers, but then make exceptions for every success, it may get confusing. What constitutes a hug in those cases? Which cases cross the line? This is why it’s best to avoid exceptions to boundaries.
If there is a time you have no option but to make an exception (like in a real emergency), it is important to reiterate the boundary when the exception is complete. Let’s go back to the no working on Sunday boundary as an example. Another manager is usually on-call, but is hospitalized with an illness. A second manager is his backup, but is on maternity leave, leaving you as the only option for taking work calls this Sunday.
This situation is unlikely to happen again and again, so it is understandable that you might need to make an exception to the rule. However, making exceptions can become a habit – do not make exceptions repeat actions.
5. Be Prepared for Conflicts
What happens when coworker boundaries interfere with your leadership boundaries? I think it’s important to know that we can’t all get what we want.
Imagine this scenario: A female employee wants to be treated exactly the same as the male employees. A male employee is Muslim and is not permitted by his religion to touch any part of a woman outside of his family, including her hand. When the male shakes hands with all of the men in the room, the woman is going to have boundaries crossed because she cannot be treated like a male by a Muslim man, not even with a handshake.
In this scenario, there is a conflict between the Muslim man’s boundaries and the female employee’s boundaries. Her boundary says, “Do not treat me differently,” while his boundary says, “You are different.” See the clash?
It is important to know your own boundaries as well as others to determine where conflicts might lie. Only then can conflicting boundaries be understood and compromises or communication be extended in regards to such conflicts.
Set Your Leadership Boundaries ASAP
Leadership boundaries should be set quickly in the workplace. People tend to get confused or offended when new boundaries seemingly pop up out of nowhere. This isn’t to say that you cannot set new leadership boundaries. However, it is important to establish the precedent as quickly as possible to avoid confusion.